


Handiwork

by mrstater



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Poetry, Redeemed Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 07:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13631877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: After the war, Ben and Rey write a happier story for themselves as they work to build a life together.





	Handiwork

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivien/gifts).



> A/N: A treat for Vivien, who requested a Happy Damn Ending. I think this falls under the category of "Ben is still working through a lot but trying hard." Also there is peace, smiling, and bonus happy ending for Leia, too. It was a treat to write, and I hope for you to read! Thanks to Bratanimus for beta-reading.

Every night before bed, Ben wrote.

And every night, Rey stood in the doorway of the closet of a room he called his study and watched.

Through the steam swirling upward from the mug she held in both hands, she observed his big frame hunched over a wooden desk. He'd built it himself, surprising her one day by returning from town with scrap planks and boards strapped to her salvaged speeder bike, along with a crate of woodworking tools. Even more surprising was the expertise with which he wielded them. Rey didn't ask what he intended to build; she let him preserve the aura of mystery as he sawed and sanded, until his work took on a definite shape and spoke for itself.

She _might_ have been slightly distracted by the shape of Ben laboring bare-chested in the sun--biceps and back muscles rolling beneath skin that no longer looked sallow from lack of light, but shone with sweat--though of course she would never admit it to him. She didn't need to. He sensed it in their bond, which was no doubt why he worked shirtless, and in turn his smugness wrapped around her.

When it became clear his project was to be a desk, she'd ventured to ask where he'd learned woodworking. Or did he have a natural affinity for it, as she did for mechanics?

Ben set down his plane, raked a hand through his hair to regather the fallen curling strands back into the knot, and appraised Rey through his goggles. "Why can't it be both?"

That flinty tone, which never failed to make her temper flare. "I never said--"

The sudden appearance of his grin silenced her. Not just the white flash of teeth in the midst of the beard he wore now, but light in his eyes when he pushed his goggles up. Like the sun breaking through after a storm. But all too soon clouds slid in front of it again.

"My father taught me."

 _His father._ Not _Han Solo._ Even now, Ben rarely spoke of his father. Shame flushed through her that she'd dredged up this pain, but she felt something like a gentle, cool hand curling over hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze that it was all right.

"I built a desk once," he told her, picking up a sander and attacking the desk with it. "When I was a kid. Fifteen, sixteen...I didn't measure accurately. Well. I _did_. But I didn't build the thing right away, and by the time I got around to it, I'd grown six inches. My knees were all crammed up underneath."

Rey chuckled, trying to envision the muscled giant smoothing his new handiwork as a gangly adolescent. "What did you do?"

The sandpaper rasp stopped, and Ben gave her a look that said the answer should've been obvious. "Destroyed it. With my lightsaber."

"Couldn't you have just shortened the legs of your chair?"

He'd stared at her for a long moment, then resumed working, and Rey had resumed watching, intrigued by the way the act of smoothing the wood smoothed every sign of troubled lines from his face. Would he work out all his conflict on wood, filling the house with furniture? Their bond had juddered with his dark amusement. _Sweetheart, I don't think the place is big enough._

So Ben filled paper with words.

Real paper. Bound between soft leather covers, or individual pages in stacks, sheaf upon sheaf of it. For a man who spoke with shattering bluntness, the words he committed to paper--philosophical essays and poetry about the Force--were as delicate as the looping script he wrote them in.

That, he'd learned from his mother, he told Rey before she could even ask. And Leia had learned from her mother.

"Calligraphy was part of a royal education on Alderaan," Ben had explained as Rey gingerly examined the writing implements. Leia had sent him the paper, the lacquered box containing ink bottles, with slots in the lid to store the pens and brushes.

"I'll teach you," he offered, "if you like."

She'd sat for a couple of lessons, enough to learn how to write her own name and his, then asked if he'd teach her carpentry instead.

The candle on the desk guttered, its dwindling flame casting his features in harsh relief. His brow buckled; Rey thought the pen, which he no longer moved across the page, might, too, so tightly did he clench it between his fingers, boring the tip into the paper. She nearly spoke to him, but she held her tongue, held herself back from going to him and laying her hand over his or on his tense shoulder. After a moment--a heartbeat--the candle brightened, and Rey glimpsed Ben's forehead relax again before his hair fell over it as he bent over his desk. As if the darkness in him flowed out through his pen across the page.

Sometimes he wrote to Leia. He wasn't ready to face her yet, but holograms seemed too distant. For now, handwritten letters sufficed to bridge the gap between Ben and his mother. This didn't appear to be one, Rey noted from the shape of the document when she at last pushed off the doorframe to approach the desk.

She went around to his side, nudged a stack of books and papers from the edge to perch facing him. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth at the memory of him hoisting her to sit on it the day he'd completed it. "Have to test if it's smooth and strong enough," he'd murmured against her lips as he stood between her knees. When it held, he'd clambered up with her to put his handiwork through an even more rigorous test.

Ben kept writing without so much as a glance up at Rey, though the Force between them crackled with his awareness of her. A shiver rippled down her spine. Hugging the mug to her chest, she let its warmth seep into her, then raised it to her smiling lips and sipped, even though she'd brought it for him. She didn't try to read his work on the sly; he would show it to her when he finished, even if it was a letter to Leia. Not because he sought Rey's approval, but because he withheld nothing from her. Bad or good, Light or Dark.

At last, he stopped. Rey watched his eyes, amber reflecting the candlelight, track across the lines of script. He reached for a cloth, wiped the nib of his pen dry, then slid it carefully into its slot in the box. He placed the sheet on top of the papers she'd moved, then turned to look up at her.

"I let that get cold, didn't I?"

"It's still warm."

Rey offered him the mug, which Ben cupped in both hands, eyes closing as he inhaled the fragrant steam. His low _mmm_ made her belly tighten, and she watched the roll of his throat as the sweet tea ran down it. He drained the cup and placed it on the desk.

"Thank you," he said, and Rey saw the sheen of tea on his mustache. She moved her hand to wipe it away, then thought the better of it; she wanted to taste it when she kissed him.

But her eyes drifted to his papers.

"Don't worry, you'll get to read it," Ben said, a barely-contained chuckle in his voice. His hands wrapped around hers, drawing her knuckles to his lips. "There's something else I want you to read first. Something for you."

"Okay." He'd never written anything for her before. No one had. "What is it?" A love letter?

"You'll see." His mouth twisted with his attempt to control his grin. There was nothing at all he could do about the light dancing in his eyes. "So will I. I haven't written it yet."

"Then you'd best get to it," Rey said, though she felt genuine conflict as to whether her curiosity outweighed wanting to feel the soft press of his lips on her skin.

Ben made the decision for her, releasing her to select a brush from the box and bottle of ink he'd left open beside it. He placed the ink on the desk closer to her and dipped the brush into it.

"You don't have any paper," Rey said.

The legs of Ben's chair scraped on the floor as he turned it so he sat fully facing her, an eyebrow hitched. "Undo your arm wrap."

"What?"

With a huff that might've been either amusement or impatience, Ben plucked at the end of the wrap at her wrist to pull it loose. Ink dripped off the tip of the calligraphy brush in his other hand onto the surface of the desk, but Rey lacked the presence of mind to tell him, the cloth whispering over her skin as he unwound it at an unhurried pace. When it pooled at their feet, her forearm bared, he cradled it in his fingertips, which spanned the length of it. He hunched over her as he had the paper, brush poised hovering above her skin. Rey held her breath.

At the first cold touch of ink, she fought not to squirm. The deliberate, delicate movements of the brush across the sensitive underside of her arm provoked a response deep within her not unlike other ministrations he'd worked on her flesh. As she buried her hand in his hair to ground herself, she again resisted the temptation to read the words he was writing, preferring to read his face for how this affected him. Ben Solo looked as beautiful in the act of creation as Kylo Ren had been terrible when he'd wreaked destruction.

His gaze remained downcast after the brush ceased to move. Rey watched his lips part. Chill bumps bloomed across her arm with the puff of his breath to dry the ink. He raised his eyes to her as he slowly sat back, giving her wrist a squeeze before releasing her to tend his brush. Only then did Rey bend her arm to read the three lines of looping text he'd painted on her skin:

_You know I love you_

_My tongue speaks and my pen with_

_Indelible ink_

The lines blurred as her eyes swam with tears, which she quickly blinked back so they wouldn't fall and obscure the beautiful words. Written on her. _For her._

Ben had turned to replace the clean brush in the box, but she touched his hand, stopping him. "May I?"

He handed it over willingly, without a hint of surprise or skepticism arching his eyebrows. Only a faint look of pleasure which she recognized in the pull at the corners of his eyes and mouth as he offered her the uncapped pot of ink, as well. Rey dipped the brush in it, then opened his tunic so that it fell open to reveal the broad planes of his chest. An expanse to write on, if only she'd had the foresight to let him give her more lessons. Before she could second-guess herself, she dragged the brush across the left side of his chest in sweeping, confident strokes.

Three lines he'd given her; three letters were all she could offer him in return. Her name, and Ben's heart beating hard and fast beneath it.

Keeping her lines from wiggling proved impossible as his skin, too, prickled up with chill bumps. Nevertheless, when she'd finished, he declared her handiwork, "Perfect. I should get it tattooed," he added with a grin.

Rey displayed her arm. "I thought you said it was indelible?"

"Poetic license." Chuckling, Ben pushed to stand, but not at full height, stooping to press his mouth to Rey's.

She thought to set the calligraphy brush aside before she was too overwhelmed by him to think: his soft lips and seeking tongue, communicating without words the love he'd written of--oh, she did know how he loved her, as she loved him; his prickling beard and mustache and the lingering taste of honeyed tea in it; his heat and the ripple of muscles beneath her hands as she slid them inside his open tunic to run them over every inch of his torso and back. She pushed the tunic off his shoulders, and he moved his hands from her waist and breast to allow her to divest him of it fully, only to slide them under her buttocks, which he gave a firm squeeze before hoisting her off the desk. She hooked both legs around his waist and an arm around his neck, but broke away from his kiss just enough to speak.

"You don't want to give the desk another test?"

Ben swung his head around to look at the desk, regarding it for a long moment before returning his gaze to her. "Not after you went to all the trouble of building us a bed, sweetheart."

_The End_


End file.
